High Volume Search Phrases vs. Low Hanging Fruit.

If you are actively involved in search engine marketing or if you are planning to be, you will be spending time developing your keyword strategy.

Are you going to target the high volume keywords that are very competitive or are you going to go after lower volume phrases that you can rank highly for more quickly and easily?

It’s tempting, when you are doing keyword research (see keyword research links below), to go for the keywords that have the highest search volume.  However, if you are in a competitive industry, this can prove to be time consuming and even costly.  Contrary to popular belief, organic search rankings are not free.  There is a significant investment in time required.  Sometimes actual hard costs are involved; if you want to engage in a good link building campaign, hire SEO experts, etc.

When it comes to SEM, keyword buys on Google AdWords or other ad networks can get expensive.  For example, to bid on a highly competitive keyword, it can cost 10x – 25x per click more than a low volume search term.

Free Keyword Research Tools

• SEOBook.com Keyword Suggestion Tool – free to use if you opt-in to the email list.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Search-based Keyword Tool
• Wordtracker – paid service but they offer a limited free version
• KeywordSpy – paid service but they have a Free Trial and offer some free keyword searches
• SpyFu – paid service but they offer some free searches with limited information

Here’s a real-life example of what I have been describing.  My company currently ranks #1 (Google organic search) for a search term that isn’t extremely competitive in our industry.  However, it delivers the most traffic out of all the search terms we rank for and it converts at a high rate.  Contrast this with a highly coveted search term in our industry that we show up for on the 2nd page of Google for (it was the 3rd page).  Even though this keyword phrase gets 10x to 15x more search volume, it delivers a fraction of the traffic to our site because we aren’t in the top ten Google rankings.

Let’s take a look at these same keywords for our paid search campaign on Google AdWords.  The lower volume term costs us 1/2 the per click price of the higher volume term.  Did I mention that the lower volume phrase converts better?

If you are a smaller player in your industry, you may not need the high volume web traffic that the larger companies do.  They are probably ignoring less searched keywords that could really give your business a boost!

If you take the time to do the research, you will most likely find some decent keywords that cost 10 – 50 cents per click – a real bargain.  Do the research, be creative and reap the benefits.

Online marketing terms used in this post defined

• SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Organic/natural search rankings (non-paid).
• SEM – Search Engine Marketing. Paid search marketing, such as Google AdWords.
• Link building – The process of getting external links (backlinks) to your site.